Mamitori Ulithi Empress Yonaguni San25/12/2013

On the day 25/12/2013, the members of wild Japanese group Mamitori Ulithi Empress Yonaguni San convened together to jam out this live set of weirdo music: like no wave or post punk fell down a hole of improvisation and a cocktail of drugs. Exciting new oddness, released as an LP on the Bruit Direct Disques label.

REVIEWS

It’s not often we get a record in stock that literally stops the office in it’s tracks. This is like nothing we’ve ever heard before. The only way I can describe it is to imagine that you were the guy that takes the money at a rehearsal studio. Two bands are rehearsing in rooms at either end of the corridor but they’ve left the doors open so you can hear the music bleeding across. Both bands are in the early days of rehearsals and spend lots of time between songs messing about.

Perhaps this is what ‘Trout Mask Replica’ sounded like on release. At times it sounds like Josef K rehearsing upside down on a rollercoaster. It’s barely possible to work out what is going on - guitars career across each other, the drummer is always playing a completely different song to the rest of the band and the vocals, when they appear, sound like the pubescent moaning of Napolean Dynamite.

If there was anything holding this together - a steady descending bassline or glue of some sort -- then I may proclaim it as genius, but the thing is constantly on the verge of falling even further apart than it already is. I can only compare it to Beefheart-influenced bands on the ‘90s like Winged Tipped Sloat, I’m Being Good or those Shreds videos on youtube. It’s not musical enough to be avant jazz skronk - it’s just a slippery piece of ever changing random rock madness.